CHAPTER 48 - Final Notes

The End of Satyam

The misfortune brought upon Satyam, a proud home-grown IT company, our bread-giver, our provider for so many years, was sad enough to cause a lot of heartburn (and heartbreak) for all of us folks who have worked for it during the golden years of its IT supremacy.

As far as Arinvan and his colleagues Sexy Devee, Manpreet, Suraj, Shiv Charan Joey, and Dilnawaz were concerned, a sad occurrence like that can only but break their hearts into pieces that can never be tended to how much ever one may try. Heartbreaks are like that they cannot be amended once broken.

Though some of us have already moved out long before Satyam saw its cataclysmic fall from grace and its managers shamed with not even a chance at some kind of redemption, the mere fact that such a ghastly thing could occur to such a behemoth of an IT company was really hard to believe. Could such an event affect us all had we been still there working with Satyam? Most certainly it’d have. No doubt about that. But I absolutely shudder to think what would've happened had we still been working there.

It was not about job losses per se, it was about the loss of an iconic emblem and its prime business assurance factor that this part of the world of IT industry was so damn proud of, and now all of that has been lost forever. All name, fame, and goodwill...gone...with the wind. But then, one would have to find a new job elsewhere eventually even if the company one has worked for is gone for a toss. Should Satyam matter to us anymore? Why should there be any sense of attachment to it when we know we have to move on someday or have already left the company? But I do believe that as far as Satyam was concerned, it mattered a great deal for every one of us as to why it floundered the way it did.

Nobody prefers facing “The Kick-Ass Drive” that comes in the event of such a huge business bungling by the guys at the so-called Pyramidal top! Maybe just by moving on to some other company would have been like coming to terms with Satyam’s disgraceful debacle or so it seemed to us. But it was hard for us to make up our minds when you know that you have become so rooted to the place and its aura, or as we keep saying: so much attached were we that thinking to go look for some other company had made us guilty conscious. But thankfully, all that sort of tapered mindset changed eventually.

Arinvan and others faced no such forceful “drive” to quit Satyam. Luckily, a few of his team members had already left the beleaguered company by the time when the catastrophe had struck. They saved their fortunate souls from the impending mess that was on the way. Much later, we had moved out in the early 2000s. Never mind luckily.

Looks like the greater part of our individual personal histories that were made and nurtured while working at Satyam – that is, much before the sad devastation of its hard-won laurels, glories, and its prodigious reputation of which we have all partaken to our heart’s content and when we were all working with Satyam as happy associates have been irretrievably lost in the labyrinths of the last century of the last millennium. I think ever since the start of the new millennium, everything for Satyam had been going downhill and this was a bad omen of sorts (for the company) that nobody knew about, not even its own IT czar who became the No. 1 culprit in India’s biggest corporate fraud. And the rest is pathetic history!

Memories are all we have now, and they will stay the way they had always been with us – truly unforgettable, lest we forget those wonderful days we have spent working at Satyam. We know Satyam is lost forever thanks to its owner’s insatiable GREED and primeval LUST for land (not to undermine the nefarious acts of his greedy individuals who called themselves as IT leaders doing a great job!), money, status, and power. But our memories of working there will never be forgotten. It’s been way more than a decade now since some of us have left that company and carried on with our lives in the best ways we could muster. In fact, we already had gone far into the Future before Satyam’s fall from grace had occurred. Well, an organization is lost, not lives! Yes, I know. But still…

The Scandal

Satyam was a Nasdaq-listed IT company based out of the City of Pearls. The company owner began from a very humble beginning or so the story goes. He belonged to a conservative family of farmers who tended to their traditional agricultural business, irrigation mills, and the like. After returning from America with a degree in computers, he began sensing a business opportunity in ‘computers’ in India, particularly in Hyderabad where he thought – pretty correctly – that computer education is fast catching up and a whole new generation of educated youth is going to make a career in computers, mainly computer software.

Back in 2008/9, the owner – no less being an IT czar now – made a shocking confession by admitting in writing, to the authorities, that he faked profits, bungled company accounts books to the tune of more than $1 billion dollars. He falsified company accounts to the tune of 50 billion Indian rupees, over not 1 or 2 years but many years, maybe he “started getting ideas” to do something like this from the year 2000/2001.

The Indian arm of the global giant Something Fishy-Pryce H20House Coffers, the once-venerable accounts audit company was found hand-in-glove with Satyam. God only knows what they are capable of! Something Fishy-Pryce H20House Coffers was fined $6 million dollars for not “following auditing standards” and the “code of conduct” while engaged in its duties auditing the accounts of Satyam. The kartha-dhartas of both Satyam and Something Fishy-Pryce… were booked under the Indian Penal Code for cheating, criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, and forgery. The rest, as they say, is history, criminal history – the one that is deeply muddled and unearthly dirty; let us not go there.

Memory’s Gold

What would happen if we all had still been there? Paired up and trooped into The Beauty Spot on the 5th-floor Tesser Towers and settled down there to work? What about GG Howdy, our manager? Will you want to have him back again as our manager? Let me ask you: after all you have read through this fictional memoir, will you change anything if you had given a chance?

It was a topic that did come up for a chat for the first time in our lives when we were no longer working at Satyam. But we could think about it no more than asking ourselves such a meaningless question, for we were not a part of Satyam anymore. That was the first and last time we ever conversed on such a melancholy topic. And then we totally forgot about the event and don’t even bother now any more than we did previously. I guess things such as Satyam’s downfall need to have to be forgotten. The era that was once so grand and beautiful has passed and we all moved on with our individual lives. One may make a passing mention of it here and there, but that’s just about it and nothing more than that. It doesn’t matter any more than how one looks at the cult of Satyam because its supreme legacy that we have been very proud of feeling has been left behind and now it lies in tatters, which will disappear slowly and gone forever. We consigned our beautiful Satyam memories to hungry, unforgettable flames of the beloved Past because the Present doesn’t seem nice enough a sanctuary for it to linger on. 

Past is the better place for Satyam’s legacy to live on. Being memorable in that way would be a better proposition for its ultimate redemption it is seeking. And yes, for the right reasons only; not for the quagmire of wrong reasons that it is now known for, unfortunately.

Past recurs; keeps coming back now and then in passing references to its unforgettable memory of the days it never forgets and then, afterward, maybe there will be nothing more left to talk about with anyone anymore.

Memories are like diamonds…they are forever. They will never be forgotten. They will live on because the heart remembers everything.

A Heart That Remembers Everything

At the end of the day, we had other beginnings to undertake and other long-pending dreams to realize. Life goes on, inevitably. Let’s just say that our old Satyam associated with that bad event was cut off and forgotten, left to rot that it withered away and died. We will stop thinking about the one ghastly crime Satyam committed and that will be all it will take to carry us forward in our own individual lives. The whole chest full of unforgettable memories though will continue to remain with us in our unrequited hearts – a heart that remembers everything and never forgets its deepest darkest secrets.

And all the sweet memories of our workspace, The Beauty Spot, on the 5th-floor Tesser Towers on Raj Bhavan Road will always remain special in our hearts. Speaking of Arinvan, memories of Satyam will forever tug at his heartstrings; for him, it still feels best times together, forever. *

(To be concluded)

By Arindam Moulick

PS: * I simply am not able to let go of the feelings I suffer from dwelling too much on the past – perhaps, it’s not a good thing to do anymore. But I am sure it has its own merits and this is one such... writing a fictional memoir: Lost Days of Glory, and getting a chance to cast a whole lot off my back, finally. Thank you, Life.

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.